


the code

by thecloserkin (tabacoychanel)



Category: Doom (2005)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Alternate Universe - Everyone Lives/Nobody Dies, Brother/Sister Incest, F/M, POV Outsider, Yuletide Treat
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-12-24
Updated: 2019-12-24
Packaged: 2021-02-25 21:14:45
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,219
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/21862036
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/tabacoychanel/pseuds/thecloserkin
Summary: Sarge's squad runs into Dr. Samantha Grimm under different circumstances and Duke is, of course, immediately smitten.
Relationships: John Grimm/Samantha Grimm
Comments: 7
Kudos: 70
Collections: Yuletide 2019





	the code

**Author's Note:**

  * For [misbegotten](https://archiveofourown.org/users/misbegotten/gifts).



> I had such a blast writing this! Wishing you the happiest of yuletides, and a big shoutout to V without whose inspo and cheerleading this story wouldn't have got written

By the time Duke had joined the squad, Reaper was already entrenched as Sarge’s right hand. They liked Reaper, they all did, but he was not what you would call an open book, and Duke wondered how the stubborn son of a bitch had made it through Basic. There was a reserve about him that could easily be mistaken for haughty aloofness, when in reality Reaper was just really bad at keeping it simple, and would compulsively overthink every interaction six ways to Sunday. Duke had once observed to Sarge that the Corps would have got more out of Reaper if they’d slapped a commission on him, and Sarge instead of chuckling had frowned and said, “They only take college grads for Officer Candidate School.”

“Whoah,” said Duke. “I _know_ you’re not suggesting that boy ain’t smart enough to earn himself a degree.“

“That boy enlisted because he wanted to dodge a degree. He wanted to serve.”

Duke, who had enlisted because it was that or deal crack for a living, thought it was just like Reaper to shun the easy road. “Keeping it simple” was Duke’s own strong suit. If you never heard from your parents it was safe to assume they didn’t give a damn about you. If a girl wasn’t picking up what you were putting down well there were plenty of other fish in the sea, no need to call her names or bring her mother into it. Duke was a glass-half-full kind of a guy. Any day now The One would come along and he would put a ring on it, and he wasn’t going to miss his opportunity for lack of trying. Half the men in the service were married already. Reaper, who had no game, was unlikely to join their ranks, but Duke sure as hell intended to.

:::

When The One did show up, Duke almost lost her to Portman. Duke well knew that Portman’s slimy blandishments were enough to put any self-respecting lady off of men in uniform for the rest of her natural life. They were in the middle of the desert—a scientific summit, site of some important bones somebody’d dug up—anyway it was a war zone and there were not so many likely women that Duke could afford to let Portman drive them all off. He caught up with them at the checkpoint: Portman, of course, practically breathing down the poor girl’s neck. Duke swore under his breath and lengthened his stride.

“—frisk any unauthorized personnel who penetrate the security cordon, you understand ma’am you’ll just have to al _low_ me to es _cort_ you back to th—“

She didn’t flinch. Most of them did, when Portman got up in their personal space, but this one’s spine was made of sterner stuff. When Portman reached for her elbow she lifted it so it was level with his larynx, and said, quite calmly, “If you’ll stop standing in front of the retina scanner so it can validate my security clearance.”

Duke arrived, huffing, to find Portman looking at the woman with something like awe. A _woman_. Putting the fear of god into _Portman_. Duke decided then and there she was The One. He tried for his most winsome smile. “Only the archaeologists attached to the dig have clearance. Won’t be needing to frisk anybody, of course, that’s just Portman being Portman. They call me Duke.”

“Samantha,” replied the future Mrs. Duke. “I’m in charge of the archaeological dig.” Was she pulling his leg? She wasn’t hardly old enough to—but she was sweeping past Portman and staring into the scanner which lit up in recognition: “Welcome, Dr. Samantha Grimm” flashed across the display. The doors hissed open and she disappeared into the facility.

Portman and Duke were speechless. Finally Portman said, “Well, who woulda thunk it. I never pegged Reaper for the marrying type, did you?”

:::

“They're divorced,” said Destroyer, which was the most plausible scenario.

“But her name,” insisted Duke.

“My mom never changed hers back after the divorce—she’d built her whole professional career on that name,” offered the Kid.

“Are we even sure this bitch belongs to Reaper?“ wondered Goat. “It’s not an uncommon name.”

“Sarge thinks she does,” said Duke, whose brain had been screaming ABORT ABORT ABORT nonstop ever since he’d heard the words “Reaper” and “wife” in the same sentence. “Sarge would know.”

Neither Sarge nor Reaper were anywhere to be found. Mac, the only one of them who could claim firsthand experience of matrimony, declared, “If they _were_ married, they sure as shit ain’t married anymore. She hasn’t sent him so much as a pack of razors. Not even a protein bar.” And it was true Reaper received very few care packages, fewer even than Duke whose aunts occasionally assembled a parcel of beef jerky and canned tuna.

“So if it’s been that long and they’ve been exes for ages,” drawled Portman, “she’s fair game, ain’t she?”

There was dead silence. Slowly Destroyer revolved in his seat to face Portman. “There’s a code. Maybe you don’t know it. Maybe you never had brothers before. But the first rule is ‘you don’t ever fuck your buddy’s ex.’ If you even _cough_ in her direction, so help me God I will end you.”

Goat made the sign of the cross. Duke was half-inclined to follow suit. If anyone was destined to go to hell for coveting Reaper’s maybe-ex-wife, it wasn’t Portman who’d be first in line.

:::

They were exes. There was no doubt of it. There was an intensity that came over Reaper whenever Dr. Grimm was near, like he was suddenly sitting up and paying attention. You could feel the hum coming off those two, so loud it was practically audible. One time Reaper bent down to pick up a hairpin and hand it back to her and she looked at him like she was either going to rip him a new one for the presumption or rip off all his clothes, and she was still on the fence about which. The explosion never happened, but you could smell it in the air like a storm brewing. Duke imagined Dr. Grimm probably looked mighty fine with all that hair tumbling loose, and he imagined Reaper thought about it too. Daily.

“She gets more rises out of him in an hour than we do in a month of poking at him,” he murmured appreciatively to Destroyer who shrugged, “They have history.”

There must have been gobs of history. When Sarge wasn’t around Reaper was senior, and Sarge was tied up with briefings most every day, and Dr. Grimm knew exactly how to push Reaper’s buttons. “I’m not getting in that Humvee with you.”

“You planning to drive it yourself all the way to the excavation site? Operate the grenade launchers too?”

“Assign me someone else.”

“Sure—soon as you’re in my chain of command.”

She bit her lip. “John.”

“This is what you wanted, right? You stay in your lane, I’ll stay in mine. You can’t say this isn’t my call.”

“There was a time when science was your lane too.”

That stopped him cold. “It’s not worth it. I look at what it did to Mom and Dad and … it’s not worth it.”

“So you chose a higher cause? Fighting forever wars in other people’s backyards is _worth it_?”

Reaper gave a derisive snort. “Come off it, Sam. You don’t care about the casualties of war—you just can’t stand the fact I listen to anyone except you. You wish you could turn back the clock to when we were kids and I never had a thought in my head you didn’t have first.”

“As opposed to now, when the only thoughts knocking around in your skull are the ones that Sarge of yours planted there?” She didn’t wait for a response, brushing past him to step into the Humvee. Over her shoulder she delivered her parting shot: “I wonder who Mom and Dad would be prouder of if they could see us now.”

Hold up just one minute. Did she just…did that mean…were her and Reaper in fact…but of course they were. Nobody had _that_ much history, not unless they’d been sniping at each other straight out of the womb. He leaned over to whisper to Destroyer, “What does the code say about fucking your buddy’s sister?”

:::

There were some white ladies who had a way of making you feel like you had an infectious disease; they acted like as soon as they left your presence they were going to scrub their hands with soap and water. You had to be extra careful with white ladies, in case they put up a stink. The thing Duke liked best about Dr. Grimm was that if she thought you were carrying the plague she’d suit up right in front of you and explain why she was taking precautions, rather than back out of the room slowly and leave you mystified as to whether you were unclean or she was a germaphobe.

“Dr. Grimm, can I ask you a question?”

She smiled, and Duke was momentarily too dazzled to remember what he wanted to ask her. “Call me Samantha.”

“I just thought it was more respectful. Thought you’d earned it, that ‘doctor.’“

She gave him an appraising look. “Thank you. I wish more men were as respectful as you.”

He seized his opening. “I bet you wish Reaper would show you more respect.”

“Hmmm. I won’t say I haven’t given him cause to behave the way he does. Is that what you wanted to ask me about?”

“About Reaper, yeah. Is it true he could have got a full scholarship? Instead of enlisting?” Duke was genuinely dying to get the scoop on Reaper. Plus, he knew better than most that the way to get a woman to open up was to pump her on some topic close to her heart.

Dr. Grimm sighed. “His grades were never worse than mine, that’s true. Whether he would have made a good forensic archaeologist, or a molecular physicist or some other kind of—I guess we’ll never know. He made his choice. Is he a good soldier, Duke?”

He paused before giving her an answer. “I think there’s no finer subordinate when it comes to carrying out orders—as long as they’re orders he agrees with. He can tie himself up in pretzels, sometimes.”

“Yes,” she nodded without surprise. “That was always the rub. He never did have the balls to just make up his own orders and stay the course. When he left Olduvai— when he didn’t leave me so much as a forwarding address, I was afraid. I know him, you see. I know he’d have floated away, rudderless, and I was so afraid… but he has you. He has the squad. He has Sarge,” she pursed her lips in distaste as she said the name, “and it’s a poor substitute for having principles, but it’s something.” She patted Duke absently on the arm before wandering off toward a bank of microscopes.

Duke was still reliving that moment when her fingers had actually _grazed his arm_ as he entered the mess hall half an hour later. Something of it must have shown on his face, because Portman immediately launched into a withering barrage of innuendo full of words like _pussy-whipped_ and _out of your league_.

This being Portman, it didn’t faze Duke none. “You of all people are gonna mock _me_ for hitting on women who are out of my league? For real?”

There were sniggers all around. Even Mac smiled into his soup. Portman shook his head impatiently. “I ain’t saying it because she’s got that ice princess thing going on. I like a challenge as much as the next man. But when the fight’s been thrown beforehand—look, Duke, you want to make a fool of yourself, be my guest. You’re all a pack of imbeciles if you can’t see she’s only got eyes for one man.”

“Mind telling us who that would be?”

Portman’s incredulity was unfeigned. “Reaper. Who else?”

There was an appalled silence. “She’s his _sister_ ,” protested the Kid. Goat was muttering something inaudible—praying for a plague of locusts to swallow the whole sorry lot of them, probably.

“Three days ago y’all thought she was his ex-wife,” Portman pointed out.

“And then it turned out she was _his sister_.”

“So what? Does that sap all the sex out of the atmosphere? None of you ever wanted somebody you weren’t supposed to want?” Disgusted that no one was heeding his eminently reasonable arguments, Portman picked up his tray to leave. “Fuck’s sake, will you give me a little credit. You think I read them Pick-Up Artist manuals for _nothing_? I’m right about this. You’ll see.”

:::

At first Duke thought little of it. Wasn’t the first time Portman had said something so outlandish he was laughed out of the room. But he kept turning Portman’s words over in his mind: _None of you ever wanted somebody you weren’t supposed to want?_ Granted, Portman was almost certainly referring to fourteen-year-olds girls, and Duke fervently hoped he’d confined that “wanting” to the inside of his head rather than allowing it to take the form of, say, dick pics. Duke also recognized he was neither brave nor principled enough to go _looking_ for evidence of pedophilia in his comrades. If at all possible he’d have avoided looking into this thing between Reaper and his definitely-not-wife, but the way everything shook out, Duke was not given that option.

He didn’t stop flirting with Dr. Grimm. That would have been a crime, a lady as ravishing as that. But he kept it light, and he didn’t press as hard as he might have, and he refused to think about why. _She’s only got eyes for one man_ , Portman had said, and Reaper’s hungry eyes seldom left her. Duke hazily recalled a story about a cat in a box who might be either alive or dead; if you never opened the box you never had to find out. This struck him as the wisest course.

Then a fire broke out in one of the labs. It was an old facility, and safety regulations were lax. Sarge barked out orders; Reaper was already moving before he’d finished. Dr. Grimm’s team had their offices in that wing. Duke waited long enough to hear Sarge say his name, shared a meaningful look with Destroyer, and the two of them loped off after Reaper.

Most of the scientific personnel had been evacuated to the atrium, which swarmed with paramedics though Duke saw no one seriously hurt. He heard over the comm that the headcount had come out right. He found the Grimms together, as he knew he would. Dr. Grimm’s hair hung in damp clumps and she appeared to be wrapped in a tapestry. Damn but she was beautiful even when her teeth were chattering.

“Sprinklers,” said Reaper, which Duke took to mean that Dr. Grimm had been at ground zero of the fire.

“You didn’t have to carry me out like a burrito,” she put in.

“Would you have come voluntarily?” demanded Reaper.

“There were water-sensitive materials! I had to save what I could.”

“Christ on a cross, Sam, did you learn _nothing_ from losing Mom and Dad? Which is more important, your research or your life?”

“According to my employers and yours? I would say the research, no question.” She jerked her chin at Duke. “Ask him what Sarge’s instructions were, the ones you didn’t stick around to hear because you were all in a lather to rescue me.”

Reaper turned to Duke, an entreaty in his eyes. _Tell me it’s not true_. Duke’s mouth was suddenly dry. There was a droplet of water quivering on the tip of Dr. Grimm’s button nose, and he focused on that. “You have the thumb drives?”

“Some of them,” she said.

“Well, Sarge’s orders were to go back and retrieve the rest.” To Reaper: “You and me and Destroyer, that’s our mission. Dr. Grimm, we’ll need schematics to show us how to proceed.”

“I’m going with you.”

“Like hell you are,” growled Reaper. “I’ll manhandle you into the air ambulance myself.”

“No you won’t. You need me here. Your priority is retrieving the research.”

“My _priority_ is—“ Reaper swallowed, visibly composed himself, tried again. “Is it that important to you? You’re willing to risk your neck for this?”

“Seems to me you risk your fool neck every goddamn day. If you’re staying, I’m staying.”

“Because of me.” It wasn’t quite a question.

She could have returned another quip. They could have gone at each other all night (Duke got the feeling it would not be the first time). Instead, she let down her guard and gave a small one-shoulder shrug. “I’ve been waiting ten years for you to come home.”

“ _Sam_.” He said it the way a man marooned on a desert island might react to a single white sail. Duke didn’t know where to look; it was like they’d forgotten he existed, and also the two hundred other people in the atrium.

She said, “I’m sorry, okay? For what it’s worth. I know you left because you wanted to get as far as you could from Mom and Dad’s legacy. To get out from under my thumb. I know I can be, um, kind of a control freak. But it turns out they don’t call it the military-industrial-scientific complex for nothing, how about that for irony. I’m sorry, John. I know you wanted to find your own way. Anyway,” she added thoughtfully, “I don’t really mind being manhandled. Not when it’s you.”

Duke was forcefully put in mind of a woman he’d once banged. She was a real big shot, Chief Something Officer of Somewhere, and in the normal course of events you’d have been hard pressed to find anyone to say “boo” to her because people obliged her with unseemly alacrity. So when she led him into her bedroom, knelt before him and handed him a safe word as tenderly as a pair of handcuffs, Duke was several minutes picking his jaw up off the floor.

Duke looked at the naked vulnerability and the perfect trust in Samantha Grimm’s face, and he had to look away. Reaper’s own face was mercifully hidden as he bent down and murmured into his sister’s ear. They truly might have been the last two people alive on earth, the way they were carrying on. At length Reaper kissed her on the temple before he let go of her.

 _Are we even sure this bitch belongs to Reaper?_ he remembered Goat asking, and yeah, Duke was one hundred percent sure: This one belonged to Reaper, body and soul.

When he caught up with Destroyer again he said, “I’m gon give those dating apps another shot.”

Destroyer’s expression didn’t change, but there was an inquisitive tinge to the ensuing silence.

“Shit, I gave it my all. I did. But I can’t go against the code. It ain’t right. You taught me that.”

Destroyer considered this—considered all the implications of this—and then he nodded once, firmly. They kept walking side by side, shoulders barely brushing, and neither of them said anything else.


End file.
